LIBRARY 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


PRESENTED  BY 

MRS.  DONALD  KELLOGG 


t-i^m') 


JOSEF  ISRAELS 


PORTRAIT  OF  JOSEF  ISRAELS 

From  the  collection  of  Edward  Dnimmond  Libbey 


^oM  feraefe 

AN  ADDRESS 

DELIVERED  AT  THE  OPENING  OF  THE 
EXHIBITION  OF  JOSEF  ISRAELS'  PAINTINGS, 

Toledo  Museum  of  Art 

BY 

FRANK  WAKELEY  GUNSAULUS 


1912 
PUBLISHED  BY  THE 

TOLEDO  MUSEUM  OF  ART 


PRESS  OF 

Rbvtew  Printing  4  Embossing  Co. 
Chicago,  U.  S.  A. 


TO 

00r.  (ZBDtoatD  ©rummonD  iLffificp 

PRESIDENT   OF  THE  TOLEDO    MUSEUM   OF  ART, 

WHOSE  MUNIFICENCE  HAS  CREATED 

THIS    OFFERING    TO    THE 

MEMORY  OF  HIS 

FRIEND 

F.  W.  G. 


"'HROUGH  his  magnanimity  and  that  sense 
of  proportion  which  has  distinguished  him 
whose  life  and  labors  will  always  be  asso- 
ciated with  the  earliest  conception  and  the 
proudest  achievement  of  this  institution,  the 
Toledo  Museum  of  Art,  and  because  of  the  nation-wide 
generosity  of  the  owners  of  these  masterpieces  whose  kind- 
ness and  whose  loyalty  to  a  great  name  and  fame  the  world 
of  art  will  not  forget,  we  are  here  and  now  permitted  lo 
join  with  him  and  them,  in  calling  to  mind  the  charactei 
and  career  of  Josef  Israels. 

Long  ago,  the  essayist  in  the  history  of  painting  has 
dealt  with  his  accomplishments  in  the  spirit  and  with  the 
technical  care  of  a  student  of  aesthetics.  For  more  than  fifty 
years,  the  lover  of  the  beautiful  has  vied  with  the  student  of 
human  nature  at  its  greatest  depths,  or  in  its  playful  and 
moving  surfaces,  to  find  in  Israels'  hand  the  plummet,  or 
eye-glass,  by  which  we  learn  of  this  great  sea  called  human 
consciousness.  As  a  scholar  of  wide  and  accurate  research 
in  the  things  of  the  human  heart,  he  has  surpassed  every  ex- 
pectation which  the  youthful  student  of  Groningen  had  led 
men  to  cherish  concerning  his  career.  Mr.  H.  W.  Mesdag 
has  often  told  me  how,  when  Israels  was  a  youth,  and  the 
banker-friend  of  his  family  looked  forward  to  the  education 
and  development  of  a  man  of  genius  as  to  practical  afifairs, 
he  was  interrupted  by  some  manifestation  of  the  young  man's 
passion  for  learning;  but  even  then,  far  above  all  else,  there 
glowed  within  him  a  lofty  beacon-light — a  search-light  in- 
deed— that  revealed  more  of  human  nature  and  man's  en- 
vironment than  any  banker  could  ever  reduce  to  coin  or  any 
mere  pedant  could  confine  in  books  of  learning. 


Advancing  with  a  little  more  of  intimacy  toward  Josef 
Israels'  personality,  and  especially  its  aspects  in  his  later 
career,  we  may  well  look  into  a  characteristic  chapter  of  his 
maturer  life,  if  we  seek  to  find  what  is  true  with  regard  to 
his  openness  of  mind,  the  spring  and  current  of  his  imagina- 
tion, and  the  almost  unfailing  potency  of  his  art.  It  must 
have  been  in  1891  that  I  first  found  Mr.  Israels  seriously 
reproducing  from  his  mind's  eye,  and  for  what  he  knew 
was  to  be  perhaps  his  greatest  canvas,  the  most  dramatic 
episode  in  the  life  of  Saul,  King  of  Israel.  In  that  auto- 
biography on  canvas — his  portrait  of  himself  made  for  Mr. 
Libbey,  and  now  reproduced  at  the  beginning  of  this  book — 
we  have  a  wonderfully  wrought  moment  of  that  tragic  hour 
in  the  mighty  monarch's  history. 

I  was  fairly  well  acquainted  with  the  growth  of  that 
monumental  work, through  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Israels,  from 
the  time  of  its  first  really  adequate  expression,  as  a  draw- 
ing, to  the  later  days,  when  this  aged  and  apparently  infirm 
man  climbed  into  the  awful  sunrise  of  that  picture,  and, 
coming  down  the  wooden  steps  which  he  traversed  so  often 
to  give  the  sunlight  a  more  dramatic  suggestiveness,  walked 
backwards,  step  by  step,  into  the  distance  by  which  alone  he 
could  look  into  the  mystery  and  grandeur  of  the  picture, 
only  to  go  forward  again  and  touch  the  face  of  the  mad  king 
with  a  deeper  shade  of  meaning,  or  pour  from  his  pencil  into 
the  harp-strings  of  David  a  more  winsome  music. 

No  one  who  knew  less  of  him  than  his  closest  friends,  or 
those  who,  from  afar,  were  admitted  into  the  kindness  of  his 
literary  acquaintance  to  share  his  enthusiasms  over  great 
books,  can  ever  say  how  deeply  Browning's  "Saul,"  as  well 


THE  NEW  FLOWER 

From  the  collection  of  Mr.  E.  Laydeii  Ford 


as  the  poem,  now  almost  forgotten,  of  a  comparatively  un- 
known Canadian  writer,  called  "The  Drama  of  Saul,"  in- 
fluenced Josef  Israels'  comprehensive  and  growing  intel- 
lectual and  artistic  life  while  he  was  painting  this  picture. 
It  is  an  unforgettable  experience  in  my  own  life  and  always 
will  remain  an  inspiring  reflection  that  I  read  to  him  this 
passage : 

"Now  let  hell  work  (or  heaven)  its  will  on  Saul! 

I  am  beset  by  a  new  demon;  still 

That  chorus  haunts  me,  and  from  every  other 

Study  my  mind  reverts  to  that  foul  lode-thought. 

I  know  that  I  am  not  in  health  of  body; 

Hence  may  arise  the  sickness  of  my  mind. 

For  I  am  seized  with  ague  of  the  soul, 

Now  hot,  now  cold,  now  rage,  now  fear,  in  turns: 

And  sometimes  I  believe  I  feel  my  old. 

My  demon-ruled  and  fatal  fit  returning. 

O  God,  give  me  not  up  again  to  that! 

David,  young  roe,  start  from  thy  form,  and  flee 

Out  of  the  dangerous  thicket  of  my  thoughts!" 

He  walked  to  and  fro  in  his  studio,  and  told  me  that  he 
had  been  interested  in  Saul  as  the  most  cathedral-like  and 
dolorous  character  of  the  Old  Testament,  most  splendid  in 
its  ruins. 

Israels  knew  literature,  and  made  comparisons,  the  pith 
and  point  of  which  astonished  me,  as  he  talked  of  Macbeth 
and  Lear,  and  the  Faust  of  Goethe,  with  reference  to  cer- 
tain problems  in  the  career  of  Saul.  I  felt  then,  as  I  feel 
now,  that  Josef  Israels  would  have  been  known  as  a  great 
man,  if  he  had  essayed  literary  production. 

After  reading  over  this  passage,  which  represents  the 
king  in  the  consciousness  of  his  overthrown  reason,  he  said 


to  me:  "This  man  certainly  understands  the  phenomenon 
of  such  moral  insanity  as  was  Saul's."  We  went  to  the 
Mauritshuis  together,  and  he  showed  me  how  unsatisfac- 
tory, both  as  a  painting  and  as  a  work  of  interpretation  of 
human  character,  was  the  Saul  there  attributed  to  Rem- 
brandt. He  even  doubted  if  Rembrandt  could  have  made 
the  mistakes,  with  respect  to  the  dress  and  attitude,  as  well 
as  certain  anachronisms,  which  he  said  any  Hebrew  student 
would  discover  in  the  picture;  and,  in  general,  he  pointed 
out  the  weakness  of  that  conception  of  the  Hebrew  king  and 
the  comparative  lack  of  power  in  technical  achievement. 

In  the  afternoon,  he  asked  me  to  read  more  of  this  poem 
to  which  I  have  referred,  and  his  own  conception  of  the 
insane  potentate  of  Israel,  while  under  the  wooing  influences 
of  the  shepherd  boy's  music,  was,  as  he  told  me,  marvelously 
quickened  into  vividness  and  power,  by  the  following  lines : 

"Still  more,  still  more:  I  feel  the  demon  move 

Amidst  the  gloomy  branches  of  my  breast, 

As  moves  a  bird  that  buries  itself  deeper 

Within  its  nests  at  stirring  of  the  storm. 

Were  ever  sounds  so  sweet!  —  where  am  I  ?    O, 

I  have  been  down  in  hell,  but  this  is  heaven! 

It  grows  yet  sweeter,  — '  tis  a  wondrous  air, 

Methinks  I  lately  died  a  hideous  death, 

And  that  they  buried  me  accursed  and  cursing. 

But  this  is  not  the  grave;  for,  surely,  music 

Comes  not  t' reanimate  man  'neath  the  clods. 

Let  me  not  think  on't!  yet  a  fiend  fierce  tore  me. 

Ah,  I  remember  now,  too  much  remember; 

But  I  am  better:  still  methinks  I  fainted; 

Or  was  the  whole  a  fearful,  nightmare  dream? 

Nay,  am  I  yet  not  dreaming.'     No;  I  wake: 

And,  as  from  dream  or  as  from  being  born, 


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Without  the  outcry  of  a  mother's  travail; 
Or,  as  if  waking  from  a  revery, 
I  to  myself  am  ushered  by  strange  music, 
That,  in  its  solemn  gentleness,  falls  on  me 
Like  a  superior's  blessing.     Give  me  more 
Of  this  sweet  benefit." 

Now,  another  experience  came  to  him  from  a  more  mas- 
terly mind.  For,  I  had  the  honor  to  bring  to  him  Browning's 
"Saul,"  and  to  read  with  him  those  haunting  lines  which  arc 
forever  descriptive  of  the  higher  and  sweeter  ministry  which 
is  almost  an  atonement  and  a  reconciliation  with  the  Eternal 
Harmony. 

Josef  Israels  possibly  needed  no  help  from  the  author 
of  "The  Drama  of  Saul"  to  realize  his  conception  of  Saul; 
but  here  was  a  distinctly  great  addition  and  enrichment  to 
his  conception  of  David,  who,  of  course,  shares  with  Saul 
the  absorbing  interest  of  Israels'  masterpiece,  as  I  believe  it 
to  be,  just  as  he  shares  with  Saul  the  interest  of  the  student 
of  that  dramatic  era  whose  master-minds  they  were.  In- 
deed, I  might  go  further,  and  say  that  young  David  rises 
out  of  Browning's  poem  with  an  eminence  of  heroism.  It  is 
a  mental  and  moral  victory,  through  the  ministries  of  the 
art  of  music.  If  ever  the  Christian  idea,  so  projected  at 
length  at  Calvary  in  David's  Greater  Son,  was  manifested 
in  a  "proto-evangelium,"  it  is  in  the  effort  of  the  young  shep- 
herd and  minstrel,  David,  playing  before  Saul,  to  break 
through  the  discords  of  poor  Saul's  madness,  and  restore  the 
man  unto  himself  and  the  universe  and  God,  by  victorious 
harmony.  'Whzttht'is  the  atonement?  What  grander  con- 
ception of  the  sin-bearing  glory  of  humanity  could  there  be? 


THE  TROUSSEAU 

From  the  collection  of  Miss  Stella  D.   Ford 


N  a  score  of  his  pictures — and  I  shall  refer  to 
but  one  of  them — Israels  has  comprehended 
and  expressed  the  very  essence  of  Christian- 
ity. We  have  had  no  greater  preacher  of  the 
Gospel  of  that  blessed  Jew  whose  philosophy 
of  salvation  gives  to  a  world  maddened  with  sin,  the  music 
of  Calvary,  than  the  painter,  Josef  Israels,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  Robert  Browning,  whose  poem  will  be  forever 
connected  with  the  great  man's  picture. 

One  day  he  was  painting  at  the  chords — merely  indicat- 
ing the  quivering  strings  of  the  harp — when  he  read  these 
words  of  Browning's: 

"Then  I  tuned  my  harp,  —  took  off  the  lilies  we  twine  'round  its  chords 
Lest  they  snap  'neath  the  stress  of  the  noontide— those  sunbeams  like  swords! 
And  I  first  played  the  tune  all  our  sheep  know,  as,  one  after  one. 
So  docile  they  come  to  the  pen-door  till  folding  be  done. 
They  are  white  and  untorn  by  the  bushes,  for  lo,  they  have  fed 
Where  the  long  grasses  stifle  the  water,  within  the  stream's  bed; 
And  now  one  after  one  seeks  its  lodging,  as  star  follows  star 
Into  eve  and  the  blue  far  above  us,  —  so  blue  and  so  far! " 

He  went  on  reading  of  "tune  after  tune,"  to  my  great 
amazement,  and  broke  off  saying,  after  "the  tune  of  the  mar- 
riage," "I  know  nothing  finer  than  this:" 

'  And  then,  the  great  march 
Wherein  man  runs  to  man  to  assist  him  and  buttress  an  arch 
Nought  can  break;  who  shall  harm  them,  our  friends? — Then  the  chorus 

intoned 
As  the  Levites  go  up  to  the  altar  in  glory  enthroned. 
But  I  stopped  here — for  here  in  the  darkness,  Saul  groaned." 

I  have  often  thought  that  the  light  in  the  picture  of 
Israelsdelineating  Saul,  under  the  spell  of  David's  music,  is 


the  light  which  comes  after  that  darkness  in  which  "Saul 
groaned." 

Mr.  Greenshields'  interesting  remarks  on  Israels  are  to 
be  coupled  with  his  charming  essay  on  the  author  of  "The 
Drama  of  Saul,"  the  forgotten  poet.  What  a  gracious  thing, 
in  the  history  of  painting  and  poetry,  it  is,  that  one  is  remem- 
bered thus,  and  that  this  forgotten  poet  has  some  adumbra- 
tion of  his  bright  but  evanescent  life  in  the  immortal  pic- 
ture of  Israels,  and  that,  long  after  his  death.  Browning 
worked  through  the  tremulous  but  unerring  hand  of  the  old 
painter,  as  he  touched  his  Saul,  making  us  read  to  him  from 
Browning  these  words: 

"At  the  first  I  saw  nought  but  the  blackness;  but  soon  I  descried 
A  something  more  black  than  the  blackness — the  vast,  the  upright 
Main  prop  which  sustains  the  pavilion:  and  slow  into  sight 
Grew  a  figure  against  it,  gigantic  and  blackest  of  all;  — 
Then  a  sunbeam,  that  burst  thro'  the  tent-roof, — showed  Saul." 

Or,  pouring  out  his  love  upon  Saul,  as,  at  last,  David  cries 
to  God: 

"Oh,  speak  through  me  now! 
Would  I  suffer  for  him  that  I  love?     So  wouldst  Thou  —  so  wilt  Thou! 
So  shall  crown  Thee  the  topmost,  ineffablest,  uttermost  Crown — 
And  Thy  love  fiU  infinitude  wholly,  nor  leave  up  nor  down 
One  spot  for  the  creature  to  stand  in!     It  is  by  no  breath. 
Turn  of  eye,  wave  of  hand,  that  Salvation  joins  issue  with  death! 
As  Thy  love  is  discovered  almighty,  almighty  be  proved 
Thy  power,  that  exists  with  and  for  it,  of  being  beloved ! 
He  who  did  most,  shall  bear  most;  the  strongest  shall  stand  the  most  weak. 
'Tis  the  weakness  in  strength  that  I  cry  for!  My  flesh,  that  I  seek 
In  the  Godhead!      I  seek  and  I  find  it.     O  Saul,  it  shall  be 
A  face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee:  A  man  like  to  me. 
Thou  shalt  love  and  beloved  by,  forever!     A  hand  like  this  hand 
Shall  throw  open  the  gates  of  new  life  to  thee.'     See  the  Christ  stand!" 


•^ 


WASHING  THK  CRADLE 

From  the  collection  of  Mr.  Henrv  C.  Lvtton 


REAT  and  precious  was  the  inheritance  of 
Josef  Israels  from  the  Dutchmen  of  the 
Seventeenth  Century.  The  main  contribu- 
tion they  made  to  him  was  an  attitude  of 
mind  and  a  point  of  view  with  reference  to 
the  facts  of  our  common  life.  No  one  has  more  justly  esti- 
mated these  values  than  George  Eliot,  who  says: 

"It  is  for  this  rare,  precious  quality  of  truthfulness  that 
I  delight  in  many  Dutch  paintings,  which  lofty-minded  peo- 
ple despise.  I  find  a  source  of  delicious  sympathy  in  these 
faithful  pictures  of  a  monotonous  homely  existence,  which 
has  been  the  fate  of  so  many  more  among  my  fellow-mortals, 
than  a  life  of  pomp  or  of  absolute  indigence,  of  tragic  suffer- 
ing, or  of  world-stirring  actions.  I  turn  without  shrinking 
from  cold  cloud-borne  angels,  from  prophets,  sibyls  and 
heroic  warriors,  to  an  old  woman  bending  over  her  flower- 
pot, or  eating  her  solitary  dinner,  while  the  noonday  light, 
softened,  perhaps,  by  a  screen  of  leaves,  falls  on  her  mob- 
cap,  and  just  touches  the  rim  of  her  spinning-wheel  and  her 
stone  jug,  and  all  those  cheap,  common  things  which  are  the 
precious  necessaries  of  life  to  her;  or  I  turn  to  that  village 
wedding  kept  between  four  brown  walls,  where  an  awkward 
bridegroom  opens  the  dance  with  a  high-  shouldered,  broad- 
faced  bride,  while  elderly  and  middle-aged  friends  look  on, 
with  very  irregular  noses  and  lips,  and  probably  with  quart 
pots  in  their  hands,  but  with  expressions  of  unmistakable  con- 
tentment and  good-will. 

"Paint  us  an  angel,  if  you  can,  with  a  floating  violet  robe, 
and  a  face  paled  by  the  celestial  light;  paint  us  yet  oftener  a 
Madonna,  turning  her  mild  face  upward,  and  opening  her 


arms  to  welcome  the  divine  glory;  but  do  not  impose  on  us 
any  aesthetic  rules  which  shall  banish  from  the  regions  of 
art  those  old  women  scraping  carrots  with  their  work-worn 
hands,  those  heavy  clowns  taking  holiday  in  a  dingy  pot- 
house— those  rounded  backs  and  stupid  weather-beaten  faces 
that  have  bent  over  the  spade  and  done  the  rough  work  of  the 
world — those  homes  with  their  tin  pans,  their  brown  pitch- 
ers, their  rough  curs,  and  their  clusters  of  onions.  In  this 
world  there  are  so  many  of  these  common,  coarse  people, 
who  have  no  picturesque,  sentimental  wretchedness.  It  is 
so  needful  that  we  should  remember  their  existence,  else 
we  may  happen  to  leave  them  quite  out  of  our  religion  and 
philosophy,  and  frame  lofty  theories  which  only  fit  a  world 
of  extremes.  Therefore  let  art  always  remind  us  of  them; 
therefore  let  us  always  have  men  ready  to  give  the  loving 
pains  of  a  life  to  the  faithful  representing  of  commonplace 
things — men  who  see  beauty  in  these  commonplace  things, 
and  delight  in  showing  how  kindly  the  light  of  heaven  falls 
on  them." — Adam  Bede,  Chapter  XVII. 


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EN  like  Euripides  and  Josef  Israels  quicken 

with  an  earthly  immortality,  when  they  seem 

most  mortal.    In  her  "Vision  of  Poets,"  Mrs. 

Browning  has  perhaps  written  the  finest  ap- 

^  preciation  the  world  may  find,  in  so  small  a 

compass,  of  the  poet  Euripides: 

"Our  Euripides,  the  human, 

With  his  droppings  of  warm  tears, 
And  his  touches  of  things  common, 

'Till  they  rose  to  touch  the  spheres!" 

He  belongs  to  the  morning  time,  and  lives  so  deeply  in 
the  primitive  and  permanent,  that,  whenever  men  in  recent 
days  touch  the  essential  and  primal,  something  sings  in  the 
spirit  of  Euripides.  Robert  Browning  speaks  of  these 
unique  moments  in  life  when  the  streams  at  the  heart  of 
things  flow  forth,  and  when  one  is  enchanted  by  a  "sunset 
touch"  or  "a  chorus  ending  from  Euripides."  Thus  one  has 
to  go  back  to  an  earlier  age  than  ours  to  find  a  parallel  for 
the  greatest  of  modern  Dutch  painters,  who  just  lately  was 
so  signally  honored  as  he  walked  the  streets  of  The  Hague, 
that  men  regarded  him,  next  to  his  queen,  as  Holland's  most 
illustrious  citizen. 

Josef  Israels,  who  was  an  Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews,  "of 
the  stock  of  Israel,  of  the  Tribe  of  Benjamin,"  was  yet  so 
much  more  than  an  "Israelite  in  deed  and  in  truth,"  as  was 
Nathaniel  of  old,  that  he  will  ever  illustrate,  in  the  sim- 
plicity and  beauty  of  his  life,  as  well  as  in  the  fluency  and 
power  of  his  art,  the  cosmopolitan  spirit.  For  example,  he 
was  Greek.     He  is  the  Euripides  of  modern  pictorial  art. 


No  man  approaches  him  in  the  humanizing  influence  which 
he  has  exercised,  to  the  utter  demolition  of  the  inhuman  and 
to  the  partial  destruction  of  the  wnhuman,  in  the  painting  of 
pictures. 

Millet,  with  the  French  peasant;  and  Burns,  with  the 
Scotch  peasant;  touch  less  strongly  and  tenderly  the  chords 
divine  which  vibrate  through  the  human.  I  once  asked  a 
distinguished  tragedian  why  he  did  not  reproduce  Brown- 
ing's drama  of  "Strafford."  I  did  not  think  that  Macready 
scarcely  gave  either  Browning  or  "Strafford"  a  fair  chance 
many  years  ago.  The  modern  tragedian,  whose  every  look 
and  syllable  are  art  itself,  told  me  that  "Strafford"  lacked 
"human  interest."  No  artist  is  his  total  self,  until  he  invests 
all  his  powers  and  experiences  in  the  character  he  portrays. 
It  is  impossible  to  do  this  in  "Strafford,"  for  he  and  his 
career  do  not  manifest  the  primal  and  ineradicable  emo- 
tions, ideas  and  purposes  of  humanity. 


THE  RAY  OF  SUNSHINE 

From  the  rollection  of  Mrs.  H.  N.  Torrey 


N  the  other  hand,  Josef  Israels  has  painted 
the  heart  of  the  human  child  so  completely, 
even  in  his  treatment  of  the  oldest  of  his 
characters — for  his  figures  are  nothing  less 
than  characters — and  he  has  also  discovered 
for  us  the  significance  of  laborious  age,  or  resistless  strength 
of  body  and  mind,  even  in  the  smallest  tot  playing  with 
boats  upon  a  little  ocean  of  his  own,  that  one  must  turn  to 
him  as  one  turns  to  a  supreme  poet,  for  the  interpretation  of 
himself.  The  secret  of  this  magnificent  sweep  of  things  and 
of  the  validity  of  his  interpretation  lies  wholly  in  his  per- 
sonality. He  is  one  of  those  who  illustrate  the  truth  of  the 
saying  that  "we  are  all  human,  yet  some  of  us  are  more  so 
than  others." 

Israels'  humanity,  considered  as  a  factor  for  discovering 
and  interpreting  the  human  phases  of  this  universe,  is  an 
item  of  character,  and  therefore  is  always  in  evidence.  We 
feel  it  in  his  paintings,  so  appealingly  eloquent  everywhere, 
because  it  is  of  him;  and  it  is  therefore  not  less  convincing 
when  one  is  admitted  into  the  home  and  life  of  this  true  son 
of  Rembrandt.  Whatever  a  man  is  by  birth  and  tradition 
and  hereditary  equipment,  if  he  lives  deeply  and  broadly 
enough,  he  will  strike  out  into  the  deep,  rich  humanity 
which  is  larger  than  himself  and  root  himself  there.  This 
is  illustrated  in  the  fact  that  there  is  a  Greek  element  easily 
discernible  when  the  extremities  of  Israels'  power  are  called 
upon.  He  is  cosmopolitan  and  ageless.  It  is  like  living  in 
an  age  entirely,  as  Ruskin  says,  "the  greatest  men,  whether 
poets  or  historians,  live  by  constant  law,"  and  at  the  same 
time,  living  through  the  age  into  the  ageless,  as  did  Shake- 


speare  and  Rembrandt,  touching  the  universal,  or  at  least 
finding  a  symbolism  which  helps  both  the  temporal  and  the 
eternal  to  understand  one  another.  Every  Dutch  item  in 
Israels'  product  is  fruit  from  the  all-human  tree. 

As  I  have  watched  him,  painting  with  the  ardor  and 
devotion  with  which  Isaiah  prophesied  and  David  ruled  in 
Israel,  he  seemed  to  be  uttering  that  one  prayer  from  one  of 
the  Psalms  most  familiar  to  his  boyhood:  "Open  Thou 
mine  eyes,  and  I  will  behold  wondrous  things  out  of  Thy 
Law."  Here  was  a  Jew,  so  intensely  living  his  life  that  his 
essential  humanity  burned  through  it.  He  went  into  the 
larger  from  the  less,  only  by  being  utterly  loyal  to  the  less. 
It  took  years  for  Israels  to  find  himself  more  than  a  Jewish 
pharisee  in  thinking  and  in  art  expression.  In  his  emanci- 
pation from  hard  formulary,  he,  like  the  great  Jew  Jesus, 
appealed  to  the  mightier,  fresher,  and  essential  Hebrew- 
dom, which  was  quite  overgrown  with  the  traditions  of 
scribe  and  pharisee.  But  Israels  has  left  many  a  canvas, 
which  shows  that  he  was  a  true  "son  of  the  law."  After  a 
few  years  of  laborious  legalism  (which  is  always  necessary 
in  order  that  we  may  get  from  our  Sinai  to  our  Calvary,  in 
anything),  there  rose  a  spirit  of  freedom  and  power  within 
Israels,  which  at  length  got  beyond  all  "the  mint,  anise  and 
cumin  of  the  law,"  and  found  the  artistic  gospel  which  was 
in  Franz  Hals,  Rembrandt  and  Ver  Meer  of  Delft,  as  it 
was  a  religious  gospel  in  Isaiah  the  prophet  and  David 
the  singer.  It  was  love  triumphant,  not  over  law,  but  by 
law,  and  through  law. 


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HEN  he  was  a  child  in  Groningen  at  ten 
years  of  age,  his  attention  was  given  to  the 
Talmud,  and  for  several  years  he  was  spoken 
of  as  the  coming  rabbi.  He  has  been  cred- 
ited with  keeping  up  his  studies  in  rabbinical 
lore,  and  with  a  profound  mastery  of  the  literatures  of  the 
law  and  the  prophets.  His  art-method  has  grown  only  as 
his  character-method.  Faithfulness  to  the  few  things  alone 
has  made  him  ruler  over  many  things.  Personally,  and 
from  a  literary  and  philosophical  point  of  view,  he  was  one 
of  the  interesting,  and  I  shall  say  impressive,  men  of  modern 
times.  All  the  fine  experience  of  soul  which  the  Hebrew 
nation  may  have  rescued  from  eloquent  prophets,  deep- 
toned  psalmists,  valiant  kings,  and  aspiring  servants  of  God 
everywhere,  while  these  have  been  led  through  ages  of  grief 
and  joy,  now  by  the  waters  of  Babylon  and  now  before  the 
marble-turreted  temples  of  Jerusalem,  had  wrought  upon 
this  face  and  head,  creating  also  the  attitude  of  bodily  grace, 
inspiring  the  vigor  and  nobility  which  were  but  outward 
expressions  of  that  inner  reality  whose  influence  the  history 
of  art  will  never  forget — Josef  Israels. 

There  is  a  kind  of  Anglo-Saxon  particularly  in  evidence 
today  who  is  so  little  in  spirit  and  so  great  in  form  only,  that 
he  preserves  for  us  only  the  peculiarities  of  the  Saxon.  He 
is  very  much  of  a  force  in  a  falling  market,  as  life's  com- 
merce goes  on.  He  cheapens  everything.  Here  was  a  Jew 
so  careless  of  literalism  and  form,  and  so  suffused  and 
exalted  by  the  spiritual  qualities  of  that  most  insistent  and 
self-evidencing  race,  that  we  recognize  in  him,  not  a  single 
peculiarity  of  his  own  people,  but  a  mental  and  spiritual 


cosmopolitanism,  fascinating  if  it  were  not  so  nearly  ma- 
jestic. In  the  drawing  which  represents  his  being  pre- 
sented at  the  Royal  Academy  in  London,  by  the  larger  and 
handsome  Alma-Tadema,  only  Israels'  back  is  seen,  but 
the  whole  man  is  there;  and  no  one  would  mistake  this  vi- 
brant and  intense  physical  personality  for  anything  else  than 
the  instrument  of  a  high  and  beautiful  soul.  It  is  so  in 
his  art,  for  wherever  anything  of  his  appears,  it  is  incon- 
testably  of  Israels  and  of  all  of  him. 


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O  one  who  has  beheld  one  of  the  many  attesta- 
tions of  honor  and  reverence  given  to  him  by 
the  people  at  Amsterdam  and  The  Hague 
can  fail  to  recognize  the  fact  that  he  was  the 
indubitable  and  worthy  center  of  it  all.  As  I 
saw  the  vast  and  brilliant  audience  which  ranged  from  or- 
chestra boxes  to  highest  gallery,  and  observed  the  blaze  of 
those  gems  which  had  long  been  possessed  by  the  aristocratic 
families  of  Holland,  I  thought  only  the  prima  donna  might 
punctuate  the  glory  with  a  personal  presence  to  be  recog- 
nized. The  most  charming  of  modern  singers  was,  how- 
ever, wisely  waiting,  to  come  to  her  own  laurels  at  a  later 
moment.  A  greater  personality  would  first  give  piquancy 
to  the  scene.  From  an  unobserved  doorway,  quite  in  front 
of  the  audience,  came  an  insignificant,  trembling  figure, 
crowned  with  snowy  white  hair,  and  triumphant  with  three 
score  years  and  ten  of  achievement.  He  was  in  evening 
dress,  and  wore  medals  of  his  various  orders.  They  seemed 
almost  too  numerous,  for  so  slight  and  unimposing  a  figure. 
In  an  instant,  the  whole  audience  was  upon  its  feet.  A  smile 
from  the  venerated  artist  made  the  jewels  more  radiant,  and 
the  great  assemblage  stood  until  Josef  Israels  had  taken 
his  seat. 

All  arts,  pursuits  and  achievements  of  men  were  inter- 
esting to  this  open-eyed  human  being.  I  once  sent  to  him 
as  a  gift  the  "Autobiography  of  Joseph  Jefferson."  His 
letter  in  reply  is  so  characteristic  of  vigorous  and  many- 
sided  mentality  that  I  venture  to  print  it,  even  with  the 
quaint  and  charming  mistakes  which  the  great  Dutchman 
made  in  handling  English: 


My  Dear  Sir:  — 

Many  thanks  for  your  kind  letter  and  for  your  conversation 
with  Joseph  Jefferson  through  which  I  come  in  possession  of  the 
fine  volume  of  the  autobiographies  of  your  friend.  He  is  a  very 
pleasant  story  teller,  and  I  shall  send  him  reciprocally  a  book  that 
I  wrote  in  Dutch,  but  who  also  is  translated  in  English.  It  is 
my  voyage  in  Spain  and  illustrated  by  myself.  As  I  do  not  know 
the  address  of  Mr.  Jefferson,  you  will,  perhaps,  be  so  friendly 
to  send.  I  was  wondered  about  the  fine  engravings  on  the 
autobiography  and  how  good  it  is  printed  and  edited.  I  have 
not  been  quite  through  it,  but  the  part  I  read  is  very  interesting 
and  amusing,  and  I  would  not  wait  too  long  for  thanking  ycfu 
and  the  author.  Therefore  this: — Arl  is  a  commonweal i/i  for 
itself  and  to  deal  with  members  of  that  community  has  for  me 
ahvays  a  great  charm.  Believe  me,  dear  sir, 

Dr.  F.  W.  Gunsaulus  Affectionately  yours, 

Chicago  Josef  Israels 

The  commonwealth  of  which  he  speaks  was  broadly 
represented  in  his  library  and  studio,  on  the  tables  of  which 
one  saw  magazines  in  all  modern  languages  of  culture,  fine 
drawings  from  continental  and  oriental  studios,  choice  bits 
of  sculpture,  and  the  portraits  of  his  friends. 

As  an  author  of  the  book  on  Spain,  he  is  luminous,  full 
of  humor,  and  most  interesting  and  instructive  when,  for 
example,  he  speaks  of  Velasquez  and  Rembrandt: 

"*Eh  bienl'  said  my  French  friend.  'Was  I  exaggerat- 
ing when  I  talked  to  you  about  the  glorious  Velasquez?* 

"Erens  pointed  out  that  it  was  the  fashion  lately  to  place 
Velasquez  above  Rembrandt. 

"That  is  true,'  I  replied,  'I  have  heard  it  said;  but  I 
think  the  opinion  frivolous.  For,  although  Velasquez  is  an 
exceptional  painter,  so  is  Rembrandt,  and  he  is  much  more 
besides.  If  Rembrandt  had  never  taken  a  brush  in  hand, 
his  etchings  alone  would  have  placed  him  among  the  fore- 


IN  THOUGHT 

From  the  collection  of  Mrs.  Nathaniel  French 


most  creative  artists.  The  excellence  of  his  talent  as  a 
painter  is  but  a  small  portion  of  all  that  combines  to  form 
the  enormous  genius  of  this  jewel  with  its  many  facets,  his 
imagination,  his  simplicity,  the  poetry  of  his  somber,  mys- 
terious effects,  the  depth  and  virtuosity  of  his  workmanship. 
Velasquez  never  painted  heads  like  the  Staalmcesters.  The 
hair  lives,  the  eyes  look  at  you,  the  foreheads  wrinkle  at 
you.  This  is  my  first  visit  to  Madrid,  and  I  rejoice  at  being 
able  to  enjoy  this,  to  me,  new  talent  of  Velasquez.  But 
when  I  look  at  his  masterpiece,  'Las  Lanzas,'  and  think  of 
Rembrandt's  'Night  Watch,'  I  continue  to  regard  the  Span- 
ish chef-d'oeuvre  with  the  greatest  appreciation  and  delight, 
but,  in  my  thoughts  I  fall  back  before  the  'Night  Watch'  as 
before  a  miracle.  There  you  have  a  breadth  of  brush  that 
no  one  has  ever  equaled.  All  of  which  painting  is  capable 
is  united  in  that:  fidelity  to  nature  and  fantasy,  the  loftiest 
masterliness  of  execution,  and  in  addition  a  sorcery  of  light 
and  shadow  that  is  all  his  own.  Rembrandt's  was  an  unique 
mind,  in  which  the  mystic  poetry  of  the  North  was  com- 
bined with  the  warmth  and  virtuosity  of  the  South.  The 
work  of  Velasquez,  on  the  other  hand,  glows  calmly  and 
peacefully  from  these  glorious  walls.  He  works,  but  does 
not  contend;  he  feels  gloriously,  but  wages  no  combat;  Rem- 
brandt's gloomy  silence  in  darkness,  his  striving  after  the 
infinite  and  inexplicable,  are  unknown  to  him;  serene  and 
sure,  he  sits  enthroned  upon  the  high  place  which  he  has 
made  his;  but  Velasquez's  art  embraces  only  his  own  sur- 
roundings, whereas  Rembrandt's  plays  its  part  in  every 
human  life,  and  in  addition  strives  after  the  historic  and  the 


unseen.'  " 


OLD  AGE 

From  the  collection  of  Mr.  Edward  Morris 


F  the  finest  thought  and  enterprise  of  the 
greatest  of  Hebrews  have  ever  disclosed 
their  true  roots,  it  is  in  the  fact  that  they  have 
led  civilization  to  enthrone  the  little  child, 
instead  of  the  pretentious  scholiast  or  the  be- 
jeweled  monarch.  This  is  precisely  w^hat  Israels  has  done 
with  the  art  of  painting.  Hebrew  of  Hebrews,  he  has  "set 
the  child  in  the  midst  of  them." 

Another  phase  of  the  matter  is  this:  he  has  irradiated 
life's  commonplace  with  the  glory  of  the  human  soul  at  its 
highest.  Fishermen  and  their  toils,  plain  mothers  with  their 
children  in  cradles,  and  aged  scribes  or  old-clothes  sellers, 
have  marched  along  in  the  procession  with  his  wonderful 
and  unsurpassed  delineation  of  the  grandeur  of  Saul,  King 
of  Israel.  No  man,  save  Robert  Browning,  has  been  at 
once  so  poetic  and  philosophic  in  interpreting  the  David  of 
Saul's  tragic  hour.  But  nature,  aside  from  man,  is  equally 
responsive  to  him,  for,  paradox  that  it  may  be,  nature  is 
never  separable  from  man  in  his  eyes.  The  range  of  inter- 
pretation of  humanity  manifested  in  the  multitude  of  small 
and  great  which  he  has  placed  upon  his  canvases  is  not  less 
wonderful  when  the  skies,  for  example,  of  his  pictures  are 
studied  with  reference  to  the  moods  of  mind  which  they 
indicate. 


Children  of  the  Sea 

These  be  young  Newtons  playing  on  life's  beach, 
Sailing  Thought's  tiny  craft  o'er  sand  and  shell, 
Learning  Life's  secret  through  old  Ocean's  speech 
And  new-borne-burdens,  therefore  learning  well. 


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SRAELS  did  not  live  in  a  duo-verse,  least  of 
all  in  a  multi-vcvse,  but  in  a  w«i-verse.  If  a 
man  is  pulling  a  boat  along  a  canal,  and  in- 
dicating to  us  the  long  way  which  goes 
through  age  to  death,  the  skies  above  him 
are  quivering  with  the  moment  in  which  every  afternoon 
drops  into  eventide.  No  one,  since  Rembrandt,  has  made 
the  physical  universe,  which  both  of  them  have  drawn  upon 
but  sparsely,  so  palpitant  with  human  emotion,  sympathy, 
desire  and  an  inspiration  entirely  human.  Israels  might 
have  been  one  of  the  great  landscape-painters  of  all  time. 
He  has  the  directness  of  nature.  A  great  painting  must  be 
full  of  vision,  but  not  of  r^-vision.  He  has  the  visual  power, 
and  with  it  the  virtuosity  characteristic  of  Hals.  A  thor- 
oughly systematic  mind,  like  every  man  of  genius,  he  is  not 
a  slave  to  a  system.  A  man  who  can  grow,  after  seventy- 
five  years  have  gone  over  him  and  through  him,  to  the 
superlative  power  which  creates  the  "Saul"  and  "The 
Scribe,"  is  far  beyond  the  possibility  of  mannerism.  Israels 
has  lived  for  this  harvest  of  energy,  insight,  fluency,  and 
adequacy  of  expression.  In  every  artist's  experience,  in- 
tention and  achievement,  impression  and  expression,  must 
be  as  nearly  identical  in  the  moment  and  motive  as  possible. 
In  the  creation  of  the  mightier  canvases  of  Israels,  these 
were  contemporaneous.  This  is  the  divine  quality  of  art. 
"God  said:  let  there  be  light,  and  there  was  light." 


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HEN  he  passed  from  us,  Rembrandt's  great- 
est son  had  dropped  his  brush  and  palette. 
The  hues  of  these  two  noblest  painters  of 
earth's  bravest  nation  melted  into  the  perma- 
nent glory,  in  which  the  two  hundred  years 
which  separated  them  seem  but  the  modulation  of  some 
splendid  line,  or  the  play  of  some  evanescent  color  too  love- 
ly to  abide.  Josef  Israels  was  with  his  master  in  the  Jeru- 
salem which  he  dreamed  of  as  a  Jewish  lad,  and  "the  boys 
and  girls  are  playing  in  the  streets  thereof." 

As  Rembrandt  placed  little  wooden  shoes  upon  his  chil- 
dren, in  delineating  the  glory  of  that  beloved  Jew,  Jesus,  so 
Josef  Israels  defied  the  stilted  proprieties  of  his  Hebrew 
learning  by  hanging  the  Christian's  rosary  from  the  man- 
telpiece in  the  house  of  "The  Cottage  Madonna,"  herself  a 
child  of  Rachel  and  Rebekah. 

Genius  ranges  over  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  soul's 
experience;  and  genius  never  reported  the  deep,  sweet  cur- 
rents of  the  soul's  life  more  adequately  than  by  the  pencils 
of  Rembrandt  and  Israels. 

The  primitive  and  permanent  were  Israels'  and  are  his 
forever.  To  see  him  at  his  work,  mingling  his  colors  or 
touching  his  canvas,  was  to  behold  a  Prince  of  the  House 
of  David  within  the  Holy  of  Holies  of  God's  nature  and 
man's  life,  unafraid  and  joyous  at  his  priestly  task. 

That  slight  figure,  only  five  feet  in  height  and  less  than 
one  hundred  pounds  in  weight,  when  he  was  painting  King 
Saul's  most  tragic  hour,  walking  back  and  forth,  meditating 
and  attacking  again  the  problems  on  the  canvas  before  him, 
climbed  up  the  stair  to  the  upper  ranges  of  his  picture  to 


touch  the  distant  hills  of  Palestine  with  a  deeper  tint,  so  en- 
souled with  mastery  that  you  saw  only  a  giant  to  whom  it 
was  easy  to  fling  from  morn's  drama  a  beam  of  light  upon 
the  shepherd  boy's  harp,  with  all  the  rapture  and  force  with 
which  Browning  wrote  his  "Saul"  and  Handel  transformed 
the  Hebrew  king's  melody  into  immortal  music. 

Both  these  illustrious  masters — Browning  by  his  poetry; 
Handel  by  his  music — set  the  soul  of  Israels  upon  the  com- 
pletion of  the  task  he  had  chosen  for  his  own  consummate 
work  in  painting,  fifty  years  before.  The  achievement  will 
be  visited  fifty  years  hence  in  Amsterdam,  when  the  artistic 
conscience  will  say:  "I  have  seen  Rembrandt's  'Night 
Watch';  let  me  now  see  Israels'  'Saul  and  David.' " 


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E  succeeded  at  last  with  the  sublime,  because 
he  had  mastered  the  simple.  At  tiie  opcninj; 
of  his  career  he  sought  to  paint  in  "the  grand 
style."  He  became  only  grandiose.  There 
was  hope  for  the  young  man  from  Holland, 
when  he  left  Paris  and  went  back  homeward  to  the  seashore 
and  the  ordinary  life  of  true-hearted  men,  women  and 
children. 

Failure  and  sickness  conspired  in  vain  against  him.  A 
new  character  was  wrought  within  him,  when  he  left  the 
complexities  and  delicacies  of  feverish  art  which  was 
only  artifice. 

He  followed  instead  "the  little  child." 

This  has  led  him  to  greatness  and  an  imperishable  name. 
He  was  an  aristocrat  in  birth  and  breeding  and  culture.  The 
life  of  the  common  people  taught  him  the  democracy  of 
sweet  sentiments  and  noble  heroisms. 

When  the  archbishop  of  Paris  saw  his  "Cottage  Ma- 
donna" in  the  Salon,  he  said  to  the  eminent  Jew:  "Mr. 
Israels,  you  are  a  great  Catholic." 

Even  then,  he  appeared  not  more  noble  than  when  I  saw 
him  touch  for  the  last  time  one  of  the  pictures  of  childhood 
reproduced  in  this  memorial,  and  say:  "'Except  ye  be- 
come as  little  children,  ye  shall  not  enter  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.' " 


The  Long  Way 

So  long  and  urgent  is  man's  destined  way 

Why  must  it  shadowy  be? 
There  blows  at  waning  of  a  labored  day 

Life's  bud  of  mystery. 

A  flower  with  mellow  tints  alive; 

The  violet  flush  o'er  gold. 
The  sky  abloom  for  them  who  strive 

In  youth  of  hope,  being  old. 

O  Rembrandt's  son,  in  days  more  wrought 

Than  his  with  light  and  shade — 
More  sad  with  introverted  thought: 

Thanks  for  thy  faith  displayed ! 

For  darkness  palls  not  luminous  as  thine, 

The  light  hath  healing  balm; 
Leaving  to  eyes  disturbed  no  garish  sign; 

Instead  unwonted  calm. 

The  darkness  on  thy  palette  censured  oft, 

Like  to  the  psalmist's  rune, 
Holds  suDJect  streams  whose  advent  bright  and  soft 

Whelms  clouded  hearts  with  noon. 

Thou  Hebrew  prophet,  mage  of  sighs  and  tears, 

Singer  of  joy  with  pain 
And  hours  of  prayers  and  mother-hopes  and  fears, 

And  childhood's  glad  refrain. 

By  Babylon's  high  towers  and  rivers  bright 

Thy  fathers  sang  and  toiled. 
While  strings  of  pure  and  vitalizing  light 

Within  their  sadness  coiled. 

Soul,  struggle  on  in  shifting  shadows  born 

Of  light  and  hearten  care: 
Till  labor  wake  in  all-revealing  morn, 

Fair  and  forever  fair. 


o 
z 
o 

X 


THE  COTTAGE  MADONNA 

From  the  collection  of  Mrs.  H.   N.  Torrey 


\J\Jt^^^ 


)(^(^M<Z8l 


D     000  ^84  /04 


